HOQUIAM -- Dotty Lynch is excited about this fall’s election even though she can’t get passionate about any of the candidates. The 71 -year-old retired office clerk told me:

“I’m so glad the one who’s in there is getting out I don’t care who wins, as long as it’s a Democrat. Either one would be OK.”

Her antipathy toward President Bush runs so deep in several references to the incumbent she doesn’t use his name, only versions of “the one who’s in there.”

Lynch had a favorite candidate, Democrat John Edwards. She thinks he would have been able to get the most done as president. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come with natural-born challenges they may find difficult to overcome on the D.C. scene.

“I think Hillary would be treated like Dixy Lee Ray. She’s not just a woman, but a woman with a big mouth.”

As for Obama, she worries “there are so many rednecks” he wouldn’t be able to accomplish his agenda of change.

Lynch is one of the few people I’ve met in the past three days who fits the description of the traditional Grays Harbor Democrat. She’s lived here about 50 years, worked the same job for most of that time, and has no use for Republicans. She says she doesn’t know too many of them, except for some business owners.

She once worked for a man she referred to as “Mr. Republican of Grays Harbor.”

“I thought he was a wonderful man. But come election season, he’d turn into something different, something terrible.”